


Fear Thyself Release Thy Rage

by literarytonguetied



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Ren, Frotting, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post Game, Vomiting (minor), horror elements/themes, minor body horror (oc), minor mentions of previous abuse (non-explicit), the body horror happens to a shadow, there is mention of vomiting but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 17:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literarytonguetied/pseuds/literarytonguetied
Summary: The floor is sticky, like the cognition isn't fully formed, like the click of his heel makes it halfway through before this palace remembers there should be something solid there. It shifts like a safe room, malleable, not disconnected enough from the real world. Off-white walls stretch before him like the sterility had succumbed and what had once been gleaming now sits in the filth that time leaves. The hall is well tread, obvious grooves of well worn paths under thousands of footsteps, back and forth, going about unknown business.Loki’s whispered laughter slithers down his back.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 5
Kudos: 102





	Fear Thyself Release Thy Rage

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the pit, this badboy is a year old bc i wrote the bulk of it like last october or smth and then promptly forgot about it lmao. i have to give the BIGGEST shout out to [chrome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromophilic_Daydream/pseuds/Chromophilic_Daydream) who helped me soooo much through this. please go check out their stuff they are an amazing writer!!!!
> 
> this fic has some horror elements so please be aware! its nothing too severe i dont think, but there is a little bit of body horror relating to body rot and mentions of nausea/retching from this. theres also mentions of blood. the mentions of abuse are super vague and there's only a few lines. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

The production lights are a familiar hot and blinding. The set itself is brightly colored, gimmicky in the reds and yellows and flashing bulbs and raucous audience. Goro sweats in his suit, but the little lights on the cameras are all on and directed at him— it’s bad form to fidget on television. It gives off the wrong image. Goro has to present himself as self assured, comfortable regardless of the setting. His smile stretches wide at his cheeks and pinches his eyes closed in just the way he knows makes him seem charming and approachable, but his straight back and carefully crossed leg exudes confidence. 

He doesn’t recall what show he agreed to appear on, he realizes with a start. He hides the small motion by brushing his hair off his shoulder and tries to determine whether this is a morning special or late night talk show. The size of the crowd would point towards a later time slot, as morning shows are usually much more quiet and small affairs, but he has been known to draw a crowd. Goro can’t place the hosts’ faces, can’t seem to focus on them for the brightness of the lights, can’t seem to discern defining features. The lack of recognition is frustrating since he can't place when he agreed to an appearance, or what led to this point, but he so rarely remembers talk show hosts after the fact that in all entirety it wouldn’t matter anyway. He's been distracted lately, he surmises and tries to blink away the spots in his vision; cases can whittle his focus down to nothing but the necessary. 

He reaches over to the water sitting for him on the side table. The chair is solid beneath him, the water cold as he swishes it in his mouth. The standard hasn’t changed, the sets are all alike, the beaming smiles of the hosts and the mundanity the situation assuages him. 

He's always been very adept at working with people. His smile is disarming. His tongue silver and transfixing. His words honeyed intoxication as he lets gentle, breathy laughter and false humility drip sweet from his lips. It doesn't matter that he can't grasp the memory of the green room he sat in as the broadcast was prepared. It doesn't matter that he can't recall names and faces, this is just another asinine requirement to ensure his face is known and trusted. 

The intro music fades out as a cue to begin the show proper. Cameras move around him and Goro cants his head to show off his best angles. The audience claps and claps, whistles pierce through the dull sound of hundreds of hands together, voices come together and raise up like a wall. He can’t see them for the lights, every head an obscured silhouette, forms blurred and ever shifting as they clap and yell and shout their support. The adoration is deafening. Goro adjusts his brown gloves and smiles until his face aches. He holds the chilled mug of water like an anchor.

To his left, the hosts begin speaking, gesturing to Goro. The cameras halt in their movement, frozen and fixed. Goro watches the hosts’ mouths work, but their words can’t be heard over the clamor of the audience members. The hosts look at him anticipatory, wholly unaffected by the din. Anticipation becomes expectant- more mouthed words drowned out by the cacophony. Eyes trained on him, they don’t look towards the cameras or the cheering audience or to the producers that sit in the corners just off the stage. Cameramen are obscured behind their equipment, keeping the view steady. There is no sweeping back and forth between the hosts and him like he would usually see when encountering an errant pause. Everything is still and trained in his direction save for the clapping. He turns back to the audience, carefully placing the water back on the side table and raises his hands to calm them, but their uproar would not be quieted. They grow louder, their reverence turning rancorous. 

The cameras are still watching, their view unerring. Goro clenches his fists in his lap hard enough to stress the seams of his white gloves. He tries to speak over them, turns to the hosts for some sort of explanation as to why the audience won’t be hushed. The noise grows louder, thundering between Goro’s ears. 

The hosts laugh, the polite television personality chuckles that make people want to smile and laugh along, that makes show guests and audience members feel included. Their hands politely hide their smiles, eyes squinted and cheeks pulled. But he can’t hear it. He can only see their bright white teeth pressed tight together between split smiling lips peeking out from either side of their hands. Their shoulders shake even as Goro can see the muscles in their jaw flex. They gesture to him again, but their smiles are too big as they bare their teeth, form their words around a snarl. Their eyes on him are hungry.

The clapping sounds like the clinking of carapaces and claws. Cheers become growls and red eyes filter through the obfuscation of the production lights. Sweat drips down the side of his face and plasters his mask sticky against his cheek. Goro pulls at it and the joints of black gloves scrape bright and cruel against his jaw. 

He can hear an inhuman whisper above the din of the crowd,_ I am thou _ . Manic laughter bubbles up behind it, accompaniment to the cacophony of shadows stomping their feet. _ You want power _ , Goro can feel the words hot down the back of his neck, _ you want control. Thou art I. _ He tears off the black mask with a shout of agony that's drowned out by cackling. The red of the set is doused in blue flame, shrieks of shadows trail into nothing as Loki stands before him. Weak shadows cower and run.

The hosts morph into grotesque creatures, their Glasgow smiles dissipating quickly in the black tar flame that shrouds the metaverse. 

Silence rings in Goro’s ears. The set lights have dimmed enough for Goro to see the empty audience seats. The garish colors of the set are muted, almost like in the short time of calling Loki, age has sapped the saturation and brilliance and glamor. The lights of the cameras are still on, and as the silence settles into Goro’s bones, he can hear the faint, metallic whir of their recording. They point steadfastly towards him despite no crew member positioned behind them. 

Goro stands from the talk show seat and the camera lenses follow. Loki’s laughter twists like smoke around him. _ Some things never change _, his head throbs. 

The floor is sticky, like the cognition isn't fully formed, like the click of his heel makes it halfway through before this palace remembers there should be something solid there. It shifts like a safe room, malleable, not disconnected enough from the real world as he drops from the stage and out of the dimmed spotlight. The cameras still follow him. Eyes are still on him. 

Goro walks down the aisle of the audience seating. Up the steps one at a time, slowly enough for him to sweep the room and ensure nothing was missed. His white gloves bump the backs of empty chairs. _ A pity, _ another voice whispers, decidedly not Loki. The black of the armored gauntlets over his gloves clinks as he jerks his hand away from the seats. He looks over his hands. The soft brown of leather gloves, a gentle contrast to the taupe of his uniform suit. He turns back to look at Loki and sees only the dark stage. The cameras face away from him, their lights off and the gentle machine hum quieted as they face the stage. Ready for the next show.

He stares long enough for it to tilt. Shift. A glimpse at plain walls and back to a dark stage. Definitely the metaverse. Unmistakably a palace. Apparently the owner can't decide what kind of threat he is. 

_ Good _, he thinks, reaching for the gun fastened to his hip; he always preferred the surprise. 

The exit is labeled as such with a lit sign illuminated in bright green hanging just above a door at the end of the stairway leading away from the stage. Goro is surprised at the detail of it, especially since he was so acquainted with so many sets and production locations and studios. The detail is unsettling and intimately familiar, and a wave of cold leaves goosebumps on his skin when he realizes he can’t remember when he entered the palace or who it was for. He can surmise someone in the media. It would make sense if Shido wanted him to tie up a loose end and shut chattering jaws especially considering their cognition, however malformed, was strong enough to trick Goro into thinking he was a part of it.

_ That’s wrong, _ he thinks inexplicably, an intrusive thought that forces him to give pause. His eyes flash to the white of his gloves. Not for Shido. They shift back into the familiar, armored black. Pain blooms in a quick and bursting firework behind his eyes. Warning bells go off in his head and the tips of his fingers buzz. That’s wrong. Something is wrong. If not Shido then—

He pushes the door open with too much force and it bangs loudly in the silence of the palace hallway. It bounces off the wall and slams shut with finality. 

Silence.

Goro looks over his shoulder to see the cognition has left only a wall. Like there was never a door in the first place. Goro thinks again that this palace is not wholly formed, it doesn’t stick to the real world like the other palaces did. It’s not shifting like a cognition to fit over what already exists, but works to change the blueprints reality laid. He feels along where the door had been, tries to find a seam, evidence of where he had come from. He focuses his energy to see if he can feel the traces of cowering shadows that had hid in the room. Nothing. Just the dark cold of an empty and plain wall. 

Loki’s whispered laughter slithers down his back

Goro turns away and heads down the hallway. Familiar. Again. Too familiar. Off-white walls stretch before him, like the sterility had succumbed and what had once been gleaming now sits in the filth that time leaves. The hall is well tread, obvious grooves of well worn paths under thousands of footsteps, back and forth, going about unknown business. 

He hugs the wall, steps carefully and muted, on alert for any sounds of roaming shadows. Most of the doors that dot the hallway are fake, turning but not opening, locked with no keyhole. Probably hidden treasure of the palace holder, small and inconsequential trinkets that do not matter. Goro feels at the gun on his hip again. He only comes to palaces for one reason. It doesn’t matter who or why, he has to see his plan through, and this is just a means to an end.

Peering around a corner, Goro is careful to keep himself hidden. It’s annoying when shadows try to fight back when it’s obvious that he is superior. He does not lose. He refuses to lose. Bile rises at the back of his throat and he swallows thickly. 

Rationalization follows him down silent hallways. If they were involved with Shido this is deserved. Corruption breeds corruption, he merely strikes at one head of a two headed snake. If he kills one then the other will fall as well. The same thoughts, cyclical in his head: it’s a necessity, it always has been, he has a plan, he must see it through.

Hiding becomes inconsequential as he turns another corner. There are no diverging paths and all of the shadows he encounters cower and run from him. “Pathetic,” he says to the silence. Loki laughs along anyway. The owner of the palace is weak, Goro thinks, too weak for him to be dealing with. If the shadows are so useless as the guards they were supposed to be, this is something Shido could have done on his own. Intimidation would have crushed this palace, Goro shouldn’t have to kill again—

He shoots a shadow in the back as it runs from him and he watches as it explodes into tar and melts back into the nonexistence of the palace walls. He always expects to see ichor stain the walls or the floors or his weapons but it never leaves a mark. Instead, the shadows are forgotten like they never existed in the first place, like they didn’t matter and their sacrifices meant nothing.

Fear seizes at his heart at the thought and he pushes at a door bodily to cover up how it hammers caged in his chest. It gives too easily and Goro stumbles into an empty room. Is it déjà vu if Goro knows that he’s been in that exact room before, even if he can’t place when or where? A single metal table and two chairs that face each other on either side. Pain presses from behind his eyes. The light hanging from the ceiling becomes sharper, brighter, like it’s directed right into his eyes and he backs out of the room and slams the door shut. 

_ Wrong wrong wrong _ the word pulses with his heartbeat. He breathes and continues down the hallway. _ Coward _ , Loki laughs, presses down on Goro’s shoulders, presses down on his mask. _ A boy running from monsters in his closet. _ Cackling loud as a psalm in his ear. Goro doesn’t look at any more of the doors. He follows the left wall through the serpentine halls of much the same. The same off white and the same worn path and the same unopenable doors until he reaches the very end.

“How quaint,” Goro can feel the edge Loki brings burning red at the corners of his vision, “a puzzle to solve to get to the treasure.” The door at the end bears very little difference from the doors along the hallway, save for a single padlock. He sneers and tries to shoot the padlock with little success. The light bounces off the lock and dissipates into the air, taking with it the echoing ring of the shot. Goro gives a huff of frustration and doubles back, trying the doors he had previously ignored.

Fake or locked or both. He avoids the door with the table and chairs and familiarity and ignores Loki’s voice behind his eyes. The palace wavers gummy and incompletely formed around him. He turns a bend and finds that where there had been fake doors before is now only empty wall. All the way back down the single hallway to where the door that led to the production studio had disappeared. He does not run into any additional shadows along the way. Goro takes the corner expecting more bare wall but comes face to face with imposing oak double doors. 

Goro’s breath catches. It burns his lungs in an aborted hiccup and he clears his throat to dispel the feeling. “About time Shido is in one of these idiot’s palaces. A shame I have to kill someone who understands what that man is capable of.” His voice is raspy against the quiet and Goro flexes his hand, stretches the fabric of his white glove to rid himself of the shake as he opens the door. It swings open easily, without sound, the weight of it having lessened as he grew. 

Goro expects a shadow that bears Shido’s resemblance to sit at the large desk. The scene is so intimately familiar that the empty chair facing him feels wrong. There were hundreds of conversations held in this room between he and Shido, words that crawl along his skin and through his blood and sit deep in the marrow of his bones. The more he proved himself, the more Shido called for him, the more he made Goro do. He had never seen the desk empty, had never seen the skyline in the wide windows that take up the back wall because Shido was always there. 

He wonders who this person is to have had been brave enough to enter Shido’s space without him being there— and that would have to be the case otherwise a mimicry of Shido would be staring back at him. Cognitive augmentation can only go so far and it's rare for a palace to remove a fixture within a location, especially in a palace so half-formed and constantly shifting. Goro doubts anyone within Shido’s circle would have the strength of mind for it and someone strong enough to augment reality within their own cognition would be cause enough for Shido to want them eliminated. 

Supposition makes for biased detective work but, then again, a detective doesn't commit the crimes he solves. 

Goro steps into the room slowly. Twilight seeps in through the windows and casts long shadows in the empty room. He does not jump when the doors slam shut behind him, though he freezes like prey waiting, breath held, straining his ears over his heartbeat. He can feel the slide of sweat down his back. He does not turn around, unwilling to look at the doors or Loki or someone else. Moments pass in silence. There are no ticking clocks or the ever present hum of city noise pollution. In the seconds that turn to minutes that turn to moments he half expects the chilling rattle of chains and cold to wrap around his neck. It doesn’t come. The silence pervades. 

He takes another step forward and while the movement breaks the spell of hesitation that had gripped him in fear, it does not take away the ringing that sits in his ears. The room feels small as he enters, but every step towards the desk gives the sense that the walls expand, like the room inhales and holds its breath. Every step makes the desk and the windows and the door behind him farther away until he’s standing in a carpeted ocean still expecting Shido to acknowledge him. 

His breathing echoes inside his helmet- behind his mask- into the room. It’s unattainable, it’s all unattainable, it’s only ever been unattainable and Goro was a fool for thinking that he could make his own worthless life mean something. Manic laughter bubbles out of his chest, and he wants to blame Loki because he can hear that laughter too, feel it deeper than his own hummingbird heartbeat, because the hysteria bursting on his lips can’t be him, can’t be a panic attack at an empty fucking room because there has to be a limit to how pitiable and pathetic one person can be and Goro would think that he reached that limit years ago as ‘unwanted’ branded itself onto his existence. 

The laughter becomes heaving, desperate gulps of air that fill his lungs until they burn. He holds his breath so that the room would release its own. It exhales with him. A sigh that Goro covers up unsteadily until the walls converge to their normal size and the desk sits just an arms reach from him instead of miles. 

He wonders if there’s something about this room, this palace, that twists at Goro. If the familiar psychosis provided by the metaverse hanging over his neck like Loki’s sword makes the corners of his vision go red. Or if Loki had pressed power and desperation into the knots of his spine without Goro knowing. Loki’s laughter bounces off the walls and Goro can’t decide if that is affirmation or not. 

The black of his glove clicks on the empty desk. Goro presses down just slightly harder and scores lines into the corner. “There’s nothing here.” He circles the desk, measured, clicking footsteps and the soft scrape of pointed gloves along soft wood. He grips the top of the chair and spins it towards himself to take a seat. He’s imagined this moment for years, the moment when he would take Shido’s place, when Shido’s adoration becomes Goro’s, when he can present himself as a monster slayer, destroying the plague issued by a false god. 

_ Foolish child _. The empty desk swims in his vision. He feels small in the chair, like a child with dangling feet and shoulders raised to his ears as he settles his arms on the armrests. The back reaches over his head and casts a shadow on the desktop. The silhouette eclipses Goro entirely and it makes him feel ill.

“There's nothing here,” he says again, angrier. He grabs the edge of the desk with white knuckle force and it creaks under his fingers. A breath. A heartbeat. He lets the desk go and ache settles into the joints of his hands. 

He leans down to open drawers. A door to this place wouldn't appear without reason, the owner of this palace wouldn't include this room if there wasn't some significance to it. 

The first one doesn't come free without some effort, and he yanks it open with enough force to completely remove it from the desk. It clatters loudly to the floor and Goro lets out a small, surprised sound. It's lighter than he expected for how difficult it was to pull out. 

Inside are piles of newspaper clippings. Small, neat print cut in careful squares around the stories. Some include pictures in faded newsprint color, city scapes and police car lights frozen with the flashbulb. Goro gets up from the chair and kneels down to where the drawer had been nearly upended. The newspaper is light underneath his brown gloves, the gentle whisper slide of the paper against his fingertips. Psychotic incidents, read the first few. Mental shutdowns pop up the more he reads. 

He is very familiar with all of it, of course, can recount each of the ‘accidents' and to whom the request belonged. The exact way Shido sneered each time Goro agreed to traipse through the metaverse at the whim of prestige-mongering sycophants. Each story reads similarly to the last: people losing control, losing sanity, dying. Some recount major incidents, handfuls, tens, hundreds lost to tragedy. Some are isolated, a single high profile suicide followed by the artificial woe for a soul taken to soon. Goro scoffs as he shuffles through the print. All of it is so manufactured and performative. Pity the lives lost despite not giving a fuck when they were alive. He tosses the paper back into the drawer and shoves it back into its slot. 

The next drawer opens much more easily, sliding out with the muffled scrape of wood against wood. It looks so similarly to the newsprint at first glance that Goro almost shuts it immediately. Small, neat rows of print and faded graphics, yellowed with age instead of greyed. He reaches in and finds reports, layers and layers of stacked and stapled papers detailing scientific research. His vision swims. Facts and figures, numbers and analysis, the tell-tale cause and effect of experimentation in dense and heavily worded paragraphs.

Cognitive Psience. Goro pauses. He had not been privy to the information provided by the researchers, hadn’t had a need since he had always had access to the Metaverse. It was easy enough causality between killing people in the metaverse and people dying in reality. He was gifted by the gods and he could take what he wanted, research grants and careful experimentation and closed systems to decrease the margin of error were trivial concerns and not ones that he was ever bothered by. 

He thumbs through the papers and recognizes his own interaction with the Metaverse detailed on pages, names of people who had died and people he had been sent to kill. Time frames between reporting a death and seeing the effect in reality, smaller lines of text showing how many had been ruled as a homicide and how many seen as suicide. There are some reports that show his own explanation of the Metaverse. What it may contain, how he gets there, what it looks like. Beyond that the reports are older, from before he started working under Shido’s thumb. Papers that are incredibly accurate though they state they are merely hypotheses going off limited information and understanding of cognitive science and how it applies to cognitive psience. 

Isshiki W. sits at the top of the first page, credited as the author of the report. He pulls the report out fully and sits back to read it. The writing is dense, and there are several science-specific kanji that Goro is unfamiliar with. It’s obvious that it was done with painstaking care, detailed minutiae about every piece of evidence found regarding cognitive science, the processes of the mind, understanding individual reality, social behaviors, associated physiological and biological responses. The gradual introduction of cognitive pscience and how the body processes change based off of perceived reality, of being able to alter another person’s cognition. From what Goro can parse, it’s all theory surrounding one unknown. 

It’s easy to fill in the blanks as he sits within a palace within the unknown that Isshiki Wakaba had based her life’s work. Hypotheses that lead to studies that lead to questions about how and why, comparisons of test subjects and different reactions and desperately grasping at answers that lay just beyond her reach but still lead to her death. He tosses it aside. 

It’s more of the same the more he pulls out. The papers all bear Isshiki’s name but the research gradually decreases. There is a sizeable pile of discarded papers before he looks back into the drawer to see how much is left and if he should care. There are only a few full reports left, but they bulge over something sitting at the bottom of the drawer. Graphs and studies of scientific repetition, early experiment after early experiment, bent and bloated over something sizeable and cylindrical at the bottom. He reaches in to receive the last of them, flipping through the information and watching lengthy case studies slowly lessen as the dates printed neatly at the top shift backwards days, months, years. 

Goro wonders idly what their research would have looked like if they had known about his existence and his abilities. He knows how he affected the scientists that came after Isshiki and her team and can surmise how the information he provided filled in the blanks of her stolen research. Would he have become a lab rat for her had she known about him? Would he have contributed to the research or merely become it? He wonders if he would have been asked to lead expeditions into the metaverse, what Pandora’s hell would have been unleashed in doing so. If Shido would have changed his directive. If he would have felt the need to approach Shido at all.

At the bottom of the drawer is a silencer. It is matte and familiar in his hand when he grabs it but he can’t place the familiarity. He had never had a use for one. His ray gun was not loud in the first place, perhaps subconsciously cognitively altered to be silenced.The metaverse did not have any noteworthy spectators, there was no one of import that may be alerted and alarmed at the sharp clap of a bullet- a beam of light- piercing stagnant air. There was only ever the target and the legion of shadows that populated whatever pit of delusional grandeur the palace creator could imagine. 

Isshiki’s palace had not been like that, Goro thinks looking over the mess of papers to the side of the desk. There had only been desire without the ill will. It was an all consuming desire to know, to understand, to learn. The air in her palace had not been stifling, the shadows within the lab rat maze had not been aggressive. She had greeted him with surprise and some apprehension, which was understandable, but she had also welcomed him. Asked him what he was doing without accusation. Wakaba had smiled.

A gunshot rattles deafening between Goro’s ears and the silencer scalds his palm like it had hushed a fresh bullet. He drops it back into the drawer with a shout and grabs at his head. Throbbing pain sits behind his eyes as the gunshot echoes and echoes and echoes. The walls pulse with it, amplify it, make the noise tumble around in unnameable recognition. It’s not the sound his gun makes in the metaverse, the little laser thing that it is, but the splitting crash of a heavy revolver shooting him point blank between the eyes. Loud, of course, because Goro has the silencer. It keeps increasing in volume, ricochets and intensifies. Goro presses desperately at his ears but it shakes at his bones and makes his eyes water in agony. 

And then it doesn’t. Ringing silence. His own panting. He grabs the papers, crinkles them with too much force in his shaking fist, and throws them back into the drawer. Goro shoves it closed, the whisper slide followed by a loud bang as it hits home and Goro.

Sits.

Lets his breath even out, lets the frenetic patter of his heart against his ribcage calm. It’s all he can hear for several moments, all there is to hear for much longer than that. The office sits still and silent as a grave. Loki’s laughter is slow to filter through and Goro decides he preferred the silence. 

There is one more drawer to open in the desk. There is no keyhole, just the handle to pull it out of its slot. It feels mocking, too easy. His palm burns under white black brown glove and his lip curls in irritation before he yanks the glove off. All that’s left is the tender pink of his palm and the angry red that would promise heat blisters where his finger pads had clutched at the silencer.

_ No healing _ , Loki whispers into his ear. Black and white talons reach through the ether and eclipse Goro’s hand for a moment. _ I was not gifted such ability. _ He carves along the curve of Goro’s palm in one quick swipe. Goro gasps and quickly retracts his hand, holding his closed fist to his chest. He can feel the blood well up between his knuckles. _ Consequences are inescapable. _

“Loki!” Goro yells into the room. He gets laughter in return, fading with each ringing reverberation. He does not reappear. Blood drips down Goro’s palm and into his sleeve, staining the cuff. “Loki!” He screams again. His voice cracks. He is answered with silence.

The drawer still sits unopened and looking at it sweeps exhaustion over Goro. No other palace had placed such a burden on him, no other palace had ever tired him to such an extent, made him run in so many circles, made him do so many puzzles. These places were always so easy to crack, the same pomp and circumstance surrounding the owner and their greed. 

Goro opens the last drawer, still holding his hand close to his person. Blood drips around the jut of his wrist bone hot and distracting. A drop lands on the otherwise immaculate glass of a shadowbox frame, in which sits a perfectly pinned and preserved blue butterfly. The blood distorts the curve of the wing tip at the corner. Red drips in garish comparison to the vivid blue and Goro picks up the shadowbox to clean it. The blood smears rust but refuses to come completely clean.

Goro is enthralled but can’t remember why he knows the exact feeling. There is a stray thought that this small, still, dead butterfly holds immense importance to the palace owner.

It twitches under pins piercing its wings and Goro nearly drops the shadowbox. Knowledge rings at the back of his mind, nagging and insistent, but not retrievable._ You should know _ , Loki’s voice scratches at his ears and Goro hates it. _ You do know. _

“Not helpful,” Goro murmurs, mostly to himself. He already knows he should be able to place these items, remember them for what they are. The weight of the silencer felt too recognizable, the newspapers and reports he had lived. The butterfly twitches again before struggling in earnest. Wingtips bloom microtears around the pins and the small thump of the body against the glass turns Goro’s stomach. 

There are small screws at the corners of the frame and Goro turns the shadowbox over to undo them. The timid_ thunk, thunk, thunk _ against the glass grows in frequency and desperation; Goro can’t see the butterfly through the back framing but he can feel it move, jerking in its binds, making the box shift in his hands in tiny increments. The screws come out easily, halfway unwound before Goro even started, and _ plink _against the office flooring. The glass front starts to loosen and every time the body of the butterfly hits it with another sickening thud, it dislodges it, opens up gaps along the side where Goro can see the butterfly struggle in earnest. 

He holds the glass of the shadowbox in one hand and the backing to which the butterfly is tacked. There is no more nauseating sound of the butterfly hitting its prison in blind frenzy, but the damage to its wings is noticeable and growing. It can see a clearer freedom and works harder to unbind itself, pins trapping it mercilessly and pinholes that spread in tiny fissures down the wing the more it pulls. He cannot stomach watching the butterfly struggle to its own mutilation and reaches for a pin pressed through a wing corner. The butterfly stills at the movement, frozen for a heartbeat, and then violently seizes once Goro gets too close. The body hits his fingertips and he jolts back like he was burned, the frantic movement enough for Goro to hear it thump against the backing, the thud hollow sounding against the foam that holds the pins in place. The carapace scratches rough against it as it writhes in trapped agony. 

Goro tries again, slowly reaching towards the pin. His fingers are cold and the feeling creeps down his arm in direct contrast to the rivers of slowly drying heat that the blood left. He leaves a smear of red on the butterfly wing as he pulls the first pin out without resistance. The fluttering tap of butterfly wings against his fingertips fills him with something cold- not dread, but close. Something just out of Goro’s grasp, too far away to place, but leaves behind a trail of unease and discontent. He tosses the pin to the side and does not watch where it falls.

With one pin free, the butterfly redoubles its efforts. It lifts higher off the foam, moves erratically with its small bout of freedom. Goro pulls the next one out without hesitation, ignoring that same notdread that blooms every time the butterfly brushes against his hand. He pulls out the next pin, and the next, each extraction followed by the soft sound of Goro throwing the pin to the floor and the almost echoes of pinfalls that are covered by the butterfly’s continuous struggles. 

It takes too much time and too many pins, the former stretching out unquantifiable beyond Goro’s single minded focus and the latter discarded with little care off to his side. It folds over itself frenetic, a grotesque attempt to bat its wings while nearly half of it is still pinned to the board. It creates a marked difference in the damage from one side to the other, the new freedom lending the butterfly more movement and more momentum to tear at the corners of its wings, at the pins that still force its body to the backing. He can’t hold it still for fear of hurting it further, unable to hold it down with enough tenderness so as not to kill it. Goro can’t tell if the butterfly bleeds for his own blood that dots the white backing as he attempts to keep his hand under the freed side to pull at the remaining pins. It still hits his hand and the backing, still seizes and writhes until Goro is able to pull out the last one. 

And then it’s free. 

There are a few aborted attempts at flight. The butterfly stumbles on pain drunk legs, the wings beating quickly but without enough force to lift it until it is enough and it rises with clumsy grace. It does so despite the tears and pinholes and grotesque stigmata, despite the stiffness of being spread in death. It bobs in front of him, preternaturally blue and beads of blood that sit on it like red jewels. He stares at it transfixed as it dips and floats away from him, wing beats sure. Goro rises from the floor to watch it, up and over the chair, towards the wall of windows in an unsteady journey with twilight filtering through the tears in its wings like stained glass. 

Goro stalls, surrounded by the aftermath of imprisonment left in pieces, thinking how pitiful the butterfly is thinking its free when all it has been freed of is superficial bonds. It may no longer be pinned but it is just as stuck in this silent office as Goro is, suspended in dripping sunset like amber. He looks at the pins, at the shadow box in parts, at the drawer that now only holds the cognitive psience reports in disarray. 

How vacuously sentimental. He should have killed it; it would have been more merciful than to give it a farce at freedom and watch it struggle in the wide open space of its grave. 

He watches it, unable to look away, unable to reconcile if saving it was severe enough to be considered another mistake or just a lapse in useless compassion. He watches it as it nears the windows, a navy silhouette against the golden sky. 

He watches it as it passes through the glass without incident and flies away into freedom proper. The burns on Goro’s palm throb to the tempo of his heartbeat and he hears a drop of blood from the cuts Loki gifted him hit the floor with a muted sound. He clenches his fists, one gloved in brown black white and the other gloved in pain. He has the inexplicable urge to scream; anger rushes through him hot and visceral, so much so that he nearly shakes with it. He’s long since grown out of the idea of fair, but the errant, nagging thought about the injustice of it all rings loud in the back of his mind. 

He laughs. It’s loud in the room and Loki does not laugh with him. “What’s unfair?” He asks no one. He asks himself. His own laughter hums under his skin like a disease, virulent energy that leaves him twitchy. 

Goro takes halting steps to the glass wall and tentatively presses his palm against it. He is met with glass, solid and unyielding before him. He sags, just enough for his forehead to rest against the cool glass, despite that same energy still thrumming through him, twisting at his insides, pulling at his bones. The laugh that bubbles up is hardly a laugh at all, and bears no humor in its breathy tone. Fairness has never suited him, never sat well under his skin as it rarely does when a person is wholly unwanted. Revenge sits easier on his shoulders, makes his fingertips tingle with promise. Who cares what’s fair? The butterfly is gone, Goro will find his own way out.

He closes his eyes against the exhaustion of the palace and lets the cool glass calm him, a moment of respite following a surge of annoyance because he still has not found a way forward. There was nothing but trivial nonsense in the drawers and vague strings of memories that claw at Goro’s chest, neither of which will unlock anything, least of all the door at the end of the ever twisting hallway. He knows that is where the palace owner is, where they are hiding, where they will die when Goro finds the key and shoots him so that he can leave this palace and the silence that drips down his spine to pool as chilled unease in the pit of his stomach. 

The moment stretches and Goro stays like that, breath fogging up the window. Loki is, blissfully, strangely, silent, and Goro’s sigh is loud against the ringing of blood rushing in his ears. His palm slides just slightly as he breathes, blood easing the way and leaving a smeared, indiscernible handprint just off center. The bleeding has slowed but the stinging lingers. The pain resonates through his hand, up and around his wrist, a manacle surrounding the articulated jut of his ulna. He looks out into the extended cognitive world, twilit in perpetuum, extending into a vague horizon and thinks it may be water. The light shifts in waves that move in the same irregularity as the palace floor— ideas not fully formed, malleable in the illusion. Goro squeezes his eyes shut, seasick.

_ Goro _. His eyes shoot open and a wave of vertigo has him pressing himself more into the window to steady his sense of balance. Not Loki, not Robin Hood; the voice is disparate and distinct. Feminine. Gentle.

He turns around slowly, keeping his hand on the window to ground himself, and surveys the empty office. The drawers are still slightly askew where he did not take care to slot them into their tracks properly, save for the one that protrudes from the desk to display Isshiki W.’s name at the top of the stack of papers in her pride. 

_ Goro _. The voice is melodic behind his eyes, comfort that kick starts his heart. He looks back out into the shifting sunset, past the horizon, and finds himself utterly alone.

“Loki,” Goro tries. “Persona!” When Loki does not respond. 

_ Goro _ , she answers instead, louder this time. It makes the world spin, makes him unsteady on his feet even as he presses his weight into his hand on the window. _ Goro _, she says again, louder, ear-piercing but still serene, lilting in Goro’s ear with deafening clarity. He tastes iron and feels at his lips to check for blood.

_ Goro _, she says again, worry trailing the edges, quieter this time. The nausea has not abated but Goro can’t look away from the nothing that stares back at him from outside the office. She calls him by his name, like she knows him, forces intimacy into the resonance crawling across his skin. The personas that sit heavy against the bridge of his nose, pressing at his temples regardless of the mask he wears, say nothing, do not react to the way her voice encompasses everything. 

_ Goro. Darling. _ The shifting cognition beyond the windows vibrates with her words, shake Goro to his core, makes the light ripple off wave peaks in rapid succession. _ Darling _, she says again, urgently, loudly, the fluctuation increases with her words, swells that look like the sea rise and crest, wake foaming around an epicenter that slowly emerges from the dark unseen. Goro watches it grow, the unidentifiable and viscid metaverse now recognizable as water, a vast ocean that stretches out beyond the horizon and swallows the set sun. 

Twilight grips desperately at the long shadows that spread across the office as darkness overtakes it, the sun setting just as the ocean bulges with something coming from the depths. _ Darling _, anger presses at the word, presses at Goro. He can’t breathe, feels like he’s drowning, pressed against the windows watching the last of the light leave as something else comes for him while he sits in the office completely alone. His heart is beating too fast, too loud, trying to drown her out even as she yells her affections with growing malice. 

Something breaks the surface of the water and Goro takes a step back from the window. It looks like a mound of seaweed, bulbs dripping off of it as the ends taper to look sharp as blades. But it’s wrapped around itself, knotted into something more resembling a rat king than anything that comes from deep water. The more it rises, the less the water clings, the finer the kelp looks. Blades become strands, knotted and matted, clinging to each other but letting air force space in between. Goro takes another step back, clenches his fists and then gasps when he accidentally digs his fingernails into the open wound on his hand.

It rolls back quickly at the sound, fast enough to splash water backwards. Goro chokes on air when it opens its eyes. “Goro, darling,” she says from beneath the water, gargling through it, words barely recognizable but voice just as clear as when it rang behind Goro’s eyes. 

Goro shakes his head very slightly, fear making his breath shudder and his knees buckle, “No,” he says with the barest puff of air, barely a word at all.

She screams and it shatters the windows in front of him. 

He scrambles back, glass shards slicing at his face, cutting his cheeks where his mask doesn’t cover. He is too slow in covering his ears. The pain from her scream throbs blindingly painful. He stumbles. Kneels. Broken glass cuts through his pants as he tries to desperately block the sound out. He can feel the blood smeared on his cheek, drip sluggishly down the curve of his jaw. He squeezes his eyes shut against the sound, his palms tight enough against his ears to make his arms ache but it’s not enough to block her shriek completely. It’s loud enough to have weight in the room, pushing him down, back, make his joints shake with the effort.

Goro can’t hear his own breathing when her wail dissipates, though he can feel it rattle through his chest and scrape against his dry throat. The sound of the waves has ceased in the ringing silence as he slowly lowers his hands. He can feel each cut from the glass in bright and diacritic detail. Even the small movement of lowering his arms causes hot pain to flash through him and settle in burning ache. The stillness presses against his bones, makes his skin oversensitive against the warping cognition.

Her hands are bigger than the individual window panes, and they come down hard enough on the floor for it to shake under Goro’s feet. She grips at the crux where the window meets the floor, using the leverage of the corner to pull herself up. Cracked nails, yellowed, rotted, find purchase in the carpet. Decaying flesh splits against the pressure she exerts. Goro’s stomach roils, riots, bile rising hot, the back of his throat cold. 

He still can’t hear her, still rendered deaf by her piercing shriek; he can’t hear the glass that crunches under her blackened palms or how she disturbs the water as she rises. There is no mistaking her hair for seaweed, despite how matted it is. There is no mistaking her gaze for how filled with hate it is.

_ Goro, darling _ . Her voice rings like a bell between his ears. _ How could you? _ Her mouth moves with the words but her voice sounds like it’s coming from within him. Her head fills the space where the windows had been, eyes bulbous and bulging. _ How could you _? Her lips move around the words but he still can’t hear his own footsteps.

_ You did this! _ She’s crawling in through the window, eyes like a dead fish staring straight at him. He takes a step back, then another. His legs shake as she leaves scores in the carpet from where her nails snag and tear at it. _ Goro _, said gentle as a nursery rhyme but the vowels of his name are curled around her lips with malice. 

“I didn’t mean to!” Goro screams at her. He can hear the edge of his own voice around the ringing that sits in his ears. 

Her head tilts like an inquisition, but instead of the gentle cant of a question, it tilts more, and more, until her cheek sits parallel to the ground and her skin sags from decay, slipping off her bones. She is still for a moment, her shoulders just barely in the room with him but her face so close. It fills his vision as her hands reach farther into the room just beyond his periphery. He takes another step back, then another. 

An apology sits at the tip of his tongue, a despairing crack against his teeth. The sound of waves is slow to return to him. He can hear his breathing, a frantic gasp in time with his heartbeat.

“You did this,” she says softly. Her hand curls from where she holds tight to the carpet. She brings her closed fist to her chest, to her heart. “You did this!” She yells again. She brings her hand to her face and pulls, stretches the skin obscenely, makes her eye bulge more. It twists repulsively, hangs like it can no longer reform the shape of her jaw or hold tight to her eye. The smell of wet rot fills the room. 

Goro retches, convulses, swallows bile and gasps. “I’m sorry!” His voice cracks. “I’m sorry!” 

“You killed me,” she reaches for him. 

He takes frantic steps backwards. The glass snaps loud under his shoes. He can feel blood dripping down his leg and down his neck and down the tips of his fingers. His back hits the door and panic fills in the space between his breaths. 

Her hand extends towards him and he can see the lines where her knuckles fold, detritus and water clinging in the creases. Her eyes are trained on him, unblinking, unmoving. She stops just short of his face and the smell makes Goro dizzy. 

She reaches down in front of him and presses her fingertip to the floor. Her head cocks further, her chin pointed to the ceiling and Goro hears a sickening pop. “Darling,” she says again. 

She withdraws her hand, her body, her face from the broken window. Glass is embedded in her arms as she pulls away, though her gaze does not stray. “I love you, Goro darling, mother always will.”

Goro makes a tearless sob and she disappears beyond the view of the window. He hears the rush of water and then nothing. Not the waves lapping for miles beyond, no ringing, nothing buzzing within this cognitive universe to penetrate the silence. There is only Goro and his hiccuping breath and his heart hammering against his ribs and the very soft rustle of clothes as he bends down to pick up the key his mother left in front of him. 

The office in front of him is empty. It is devoid of life and meaning and everything that had originally brought Goro sadness and then fear and then all consuming rage. The office in front of him belongs to no one. Darkness fills the outside, more opaque than the black of night. There are no more waves and there is nothing to hide under them, there is no breeze from the broken window to stir the stagnation that pervades the corners of the office and sinks into the fibers of the carpet and the pores of the wall. There is no butterfly with fissured wings, no grotesque red against blue. 

He turns towards the door, away from the open window and the black sky and the dark that creeps into the room in inky tendrils like nightmares that follow into the day. The doorknob is cold under his hand, slippery from the still-wet blood on his palm. It turns and clicks and swings open with ease. He does not breathe easier once he steps through. It feels like the dark followed him despite there no longer being a door to follow him through. It presses at his sternum, follows the lines of his rib cage to the bumps of his spine, oily under his skin, making him unable to take a full breath against the weight of it. 

Goro’s footsteps are measured down the hallway. They echo in staccato clicks unto themselves, thousands of footsteps beside him, behind him, ahead of him, stretching out around corners and back into rooms to which he cannot return. The hallway seems longer, twisting serpentine in a single line. He does not check the other doors that sit tall and silent on either side. Identical doors stand silent as soldiers, a guard’s row right up until the end of the hallway. The teeth of the key bite into his palm and he holds it tighter.

The final door stands baren and utilitarian, the same as every door to every interrogation room in the precinct. It is just as hidden, tucked behind so many corners, as the rooms in the station were, down staircases past flickering lights and windowless hallways, past doors and doors and doors to a mirrored window to view faces filled with confidence or sadness or fear. He places the key into the lock just below the door knob. There is no resistance as he slides it in, turns it, listens to the tumblers fall. Catharsis has no place within this palace when all that is deserved is vilification.

The room he enters is dark, save for one lone lamp hanging from an unseen ceiling. It sways in a small line, a rotating pendulum of barely discernible movement. It hangs over a single metal table. It’s empty, worn and dented.There are scuffs that seem out of place, though most interrogation room tables end up in a similar state.

Goro shuts the door behind him and then there is no door. Only the darkness and the single lamp over the table and Amamiya Ren just barely illuminated by the light. Shadows are cast long on the planes of his face, but he still offers his shut-eyed smile, cat-like in how he folds his hands on top of the table. 

“Welcome home,” he says but his voice doesn’t seem to be coming from him, like he’s lip syncing just a beat off. “You’re back awfully late.” 

Goro steps forward and hears the rattling of shackles. The heel-toe click of his shoes chases the sound away and makes the darkness around him writhe. Ren’s smile drops a touch. It’s enough to open his eyes, to bring them into relief against the shadow on his face. He wears the darkness like a mask around yellow eyes. Red. Grey. 

Goro blinks. There’s a gun in his hand, there was always a gun in his hand, it’s weight has always been there. The silencer ruins the balance, though, makes it off kilter, makes his wrist want to dip forward and shoot Ren in the heart. Ren watches him move as he raises the gun to point the barrel at him. His cat smile stretches, cheshire; Goro’s vision blurs and the world tilts at an obscene degree.

Goro squeezes his eyes shut to clear them and when the stars fade from his sight he is facing a pleasant boy. A closed-eyed smile. A carefully calculated cant to his head. The single lamp feels as hot as production lights and sweat beads at his temples. His gloves are black and armored and they click as he adjusts his grip. There is an easy decision to make, and the pleasant boy does not move even when Goro presses the barrel to his forehead with enough force to leave a red ring of indented skin. 

The barrel of a gun is cold against his temple. 

“We could have been friends,” says the pleasant boy in front of him.

“It’s not too late,” Ren says to his side. The sight is familiar. As is Ren’s gun. As is the way his index finger hesitates to lay on the trigger.

The pleasant boy laughs, light and tinkling, blinding under the light. “It’s always too late for a bastard. A murderer. A disgrace.” 

Rage makes Goro’s hands shake and Loki’s whispers fill the space in between.

“Spare me your trifling feelings,” the pleasant boy continues, still all television smiles, “and spare me your paltry retribution. An unwanted corpse is no different than an unwanted person.” He presses into the barrel of the gun.

The silencer puts space between Goro and the pleasant boy, but Ren is close. Close enough for Goro to hear him breathe, to feel his eyes. The barrel at his temple is steady. “Look inside yourself.” The words sound far away even as Ren says them so near. Loki’s laughter is louder, the power of Berserker underneath his skin ready and eager. 

There is an easy decision to make. “You should get rid of me,” Goro’s voice crackles like old radio static. “Don’t make the same mistake twice.” 

Goro pulls the trigger. 

It clicks, pin hitting nothing. 

He pulls the trigger again, and again, and again. Metallic clicks loud as thunder fill the room as Goro shoots through an empty magazine. The darkness moves around him, feeding on the echoes as Goro slowly draws the gun closer to himself. The silencer is hot, like all of the rounds were fired in quick succession, and suddenly the very familiar weight seems like too much. He drops the gun on the table, watches it fall to a metal on metal burst of noise, more deafening than the silence.

He looks up at the pleasant boy. Ren is sitting in front of him, gentle cat smile, eyes closed. 

“You should get rid of me,” the pleasant boy says at his side, gun barrel suddenly hot against his forehead. His voice sounds like Goro’s overlayed on itself a hundred times, a hundred different iterations of the same mistake. 

“It’s not too late,” Ren says. The lamp overhead sways. Shadows obscure his face. 

A pleasant boy pulls the trigger. 

* * *

Goro bolts upright. Sweat is cold and sticky on his back and it makes his sheets cling to him, pulling tight like a tourniquet. His chest heaves for breath and the shallow sound rasps into the darkness of the night. He’s shaking under the blankets as his eyes adjust to the not-light of the moon through the open window. The breeze carries the slight chill of early spring and it breaks goosebumps out along Goro’s arms. He grips at his shirt, at his heart, feels it hammering against his white knuckles loud as a gunshot in his ears.

He closes his eyes. Squeezes them shut tight and presses the heel of his palms to them until the only thing he can see is starburst to fill the dark. His breathing quavers, tremulo, shuddering into his lungs and pathetic against his ears. He grits his teeth and can feel the tension in his temple. He runs his hands through his hair in anxious anger, holds it back, pulls just a little, just enough to ground him.

Something ugly bubbles in the pit of his stomach and it makes him want to scream, to laugh, manic and giddy and hysterical in how ridiculous it all is. He shakes with the force of it. It balloons in his chest and the urge presses at his tongue, his teeth, makes him breathe in and in and in but not out because if he let it out, that laughter and the anger and the incredulity and anxiety and hatred would come rushing out, too. It would chase his breath and fill the room and pop the balloon of feeling filling his chest like evisceration, letting everything pour out like rainwater mixed with rot.

Ren mumbles something beside him in his sleep and Goro whips his head towards him. He can only just make out his features, fine boned and soft with his hair splayed in curls not fully formed along the pillow. He’s not quite awake, but the abruptness of Goro’s movement is enough to make Ren readjust. Goro holds his breath and watches Ren turn towards him.

“Honey,” he murmurs, mostly into his pillow, and grabs at the hem of Goro’s shirt.

Goro takes a deep, silent breath and delicately brushes a hand through Ren’s hair, careful not to snag on knots, “It was just a strange dream, go back to sleep,” he tells him, soft psalm words in a cathedral that carry more weight than they ought. He hopes that Ren can’t feel how his hand shakes against his neck as he straightens curls and watches them pop back into crescent moons against Ren’s temple.

Ren opens his eyes, finds Goro’s without issue in the dark. Yellow red grey. Goro’s hand stalls; he pulls away and Ren sits up. The whisper slide of sheets seems too loud, too much movement for the night and the sweat that clings cold to Goro’s shirt and slips down his back.

“Goro?” Their knees bump under blankets and Ren’s toes are cold against Goro’s ankle. Goro’s hands feel useless so he holds them together in his lap, pooled in the blanket puddle formed by the space between his legs. Ren’s chest presses against Goro’s shoulder. He uses one hand to prop himself up and the other he moves to lay his fingers across Goro’s wrist.

Ren searches his face. Goro can feel the path of Ren’s eyes, at the hair that sticks to his forehead and the way the tremors still rock silently in his joints and the way Goro looks towards the window like it will hide the way he can’t settle in his skin.

Ren leans forward and bumps his lips against the swell of Goro’s shoulder, gives him a kiss as gentle as starlight. “What was your dream about?”

Goro hums and Ren can feel it vibrate through his chest. He watches Goro’s profile lined in white as Goro swallows, opens his mouth and then closes it again. “You were in it.” He tells Ren.

“I know I’m the man of your dreams, so that’s not too surprising,” Ren quips, lips moving against him as he answers quick enough that stillness does not fester between them.

Goro’s smile splits like lightning. There’s a beat before he chuckles. “Always so modest.”

Ren looks up at him, turns his head to pillow his cheek against Goro’s shoulder. “Truth need not be modest.” Goro turns to look at him with a twist to his mouth but can’t hide the small swell of laughter that intertwines with Ren’s own. Ren threads his fingers in with Goro’s pulling them together like zipper teeth.

He looks down at Ren, catches grey eyes and a smile so fond it makes him ache; he squeezes his hand and feels the balloon in his chest deflate. He sighs and lets the exhalation chase away the chills and the taste of blood that sits at the back of his throat. Ren must see it, because he pushes himself up to catch Goro’s lips.

A quick peck, a question of interest and consent. Goro kisses him back without hesitation and it makes flower petal warmth press at his cheeks and down his neck and along the divots of his clavicle. Goro can taste Ren’s smile, can feel Ren curl his hand around Goro’s jaw, feel his fingers at the nape of his neck still damp with sweat.

He presses into Goro words and thoughts and feelings that can’t be articulated aloud. He presses them into his lips and his tongue and his teeth like air to breathe, like a drumbeat heart constant and steady and perpetual. It resonates deep in ever increasing waves that crest and crash over them as they do to each other.

They twist around each other. Goro’s hands are fists clenched tight in Ren’s clothes. He grips him like a lifeline, preservation, salvation. He pulls Ren close like Ren could fill all of the empty cracks that fissure through Goro like fault lines, like he could fuse all of the broken and missing pieces like gold filling in the cracks of a vase. Like he could make Goro more than he is, make him something valuable. Like he could want and be wanted in return.

Goro pulls him closer and holds him tighter until Ren is forced to throw his leg over Goro’s hips. Goro feels like a butterfly pinned to be adored by the way Ren leaves fingerprint evidence over Goro’s skin. He was here, here, here, brushing down tendons in sharp relief and kissing his lips bruised and letting Goro take and take and take like he’s planting the evidence upon himself.

The brushed whispers of their skin sliding against each other and the rustle of their clothes and the breath they share pushes the still quiet out of the room.

Goro shakes against Ren and Ren hesitates. “Honey?”

“It was just a strange dream,” Goro tells him again before Ren can get the thoughts in order, sifting through concern sitting on his tongue. Goro pulls him down by the collar of his shirt so their hips are slotted together and Goro is mouthing at Ren’s neck. The more they move together, the more it fights off the feeling that swells in Goro’s chest, the more it fights back memories that rust along the fine details of the dream that still try to chase Goro into wakefulness.

Ren pulls back even as Goro tries to pull him forward. He raises himself over Goro, whose hair spread along the pillow like a halo even as Goro won’t meet his eyes. Goro keeps his gaze to the open window, his face turned into the pillow and his brow furrowed deep. He still has his hands wrapped in Ren’s clothes, gripping tight and resting one hand against his hip and the other just below the jut of his last rib. His breath shudders out of him with all of the words he won’t say even as Ren lays warm and real above him.

Ren brushes the hair from Goro’s face and cups his cheek. Goro closes his eyes, turns and kisses into Ren’s palm. It’s halcyon around them, with a stark line of white along their dark silhouettes and the faraway sound of a siren piercing the night with quickly fading peals. When Goro opens his eyes, it’s with clarity and calm. Ren leans into kiss him and they meet each other like the sun meets the dawn, when the horizon opens up and night lends itself to day and everything is bathed in warmth.

Ren chases the shake and the frenzy and the fear from Goro. He whispers softly into his lips gentle reassurances, broad and varying, that Goro tastes and takes and swallows down like tonic. He’s alright, he’s here now, he’s loved he’s loved he’s loved.

They kiss like it’s all they need, breathe in the same air and let their hands travel the same paths in habitual intimacy. Ren lowers himself to Goro’s side. Their hands intertwine between them. Goro’s white knuckled grip on Ren’s shirt relaxes and he smooths the wrinkles left along Ren’s hip. Ren brushes hair behind Goro’s ear as they face each other and finds home in the crux of Goro’s neck.

“I’m sorry for such a rude awakening. It seems childish to be so affected by something as simple as a bad dream.” Goro’s chagrin is not well hidden under affected nonchalance but he still smiles at Ren like it would fool him, anyway.

Goro apologizes like Ren hasn’t woken him up in silent tremors with his curls matted flat against his temples and the soreness of cuffs a phantom pain around his wrists. Like he hasn’t caught Ren with that faraway look, sitting upright in their bed in the middle of the night, thinking about years and lifetimes ago stuck against the what-ifs and the maybes and the mistakes. Ren smiles small and warm against the similar pains of similar nightmares and kisses the worry still creasing Goro’s forehead.

It’s easy to forget, in the one brief moment, the ghosts that follow them.

The space between them is theirs alone and Goro tilts his chin up for Ren to kiss him again and again and again until they’re both breathless. Until they are sidled close, chest to chest, and Ren works a thigh in between Goro’s and catches his hands on the knots in Goro’s hair.

Goro closes his eyes to the open window and concentrates on Ren’s warmth. He lets it chase away the dull ache still sitting in his bones. When he closes his eyes, he can almost see the blue butterfly fluttering just out of reach, flying until it's nothing but a spot on a deep red horizon. When he opens them again, it's to the grey of Ren's gaze, inky in the night and just a shade lighter than the darkness that sits in the curls of his hair.

Ren huffs and kisses the apology from his mouth. Goro can almost feel Ren's words pressed into his teeth in silent admonishment, don't apologize for needing help. "Honey," he sighs instead, because Ren knows Goro will accept little else right now. Platitudes are easy and common, too much a placebo to help with the wounds Goro has inflicted upon himself. So Ren kisses him as they lay side by side and lets every point of contact prove their reality.

Goro needs it. There's reassurance pressed into his skin in the shape of Ren's fingerprint bruises, confirmation of his desire and desirability. There are a lot of words that can be said- should be said. The same words that they have chewed through together before and will again because their fears are not so easily assuaged. Goro returns the affections with careful restraint, a bow strung too tight and pulled in the hands of an amateur, about to snap. He kisses Ren to prove that he's okay, that he's fine, that it was nothing more than a nightmare and he is not so easily affected by bogeymen and shadows. He wills himself not to shake in Ren's grasp and focuses on the heat of Ren's hand at his jaw and the pressure of his lips so carefully laid upon his own.

Ren pulls back just enough that Goro can see his lips like bruised flower petals. "Don't lie to me." He brushes his thumb against the sharp line of Goro's jaw and the tension in Goro snaps.

The moon slips behind the clouds and the left over parts of Goro's fear ignite between them. He needs it. He kisses Ren desperate, hungry, still sore and tender as Ren fills all the empty parts of him. There are holes where fear had burrowed, where doubt had crept in and grown and cracked him.

He forces Ren closer and rolls his hips to bring heat into Ren's lazy late-hour arousal and kisses him until he can't taste Ren's words anymore, until Ren is just as hungry as he is. He doesn't want Ren's concern, is loathe to ask for his help, though he knows it is freely given. Ren gives and he takes and there's a semblance of guilt that nips at him but Ren kisses away that pain, too.

Goro bites at Ren's lips. His fingers run up Ren's sides and displace his sleep shirt so he can feel along the lines of Ren's muscle and the bumps of his ribs and feel each shuddering breath under his palms.

Ren has a similar idea and takes his hand, gentle at Goro's neck, and pushes him to his back. He doesn't stop kissing, doesn't pause as he takes his thigh from in between Goro's own and instead slings it over his hips, moving so that he is above Goro and all around him. He sits back and the pressure makes Goro punch drunk as sparks crawl up his skin and leave him winded.

Ren could be an archangel above him, avenging and powerful as the moonlight breaks through the cloud cover and paints him in ethereal white. He shucks his shirt and his hair curls in knots and Goro wishes he could see the color on his cheeks. A red he knows intimately now washed out in monochrome. Goro reaches for him and Ren meets him sooner than halfway, kisses him like a storm, like famine through fields, hungry and powerful and all encompassing.

He pushes at Goro's sleep shirt until Goro raises himself enough to remove it and then Goro's hands are everywhere, holding Ren's jaw and his neck and his hips, pulling at him like he's trying to see the seams that keep him together. Ren smooths Goro's hair and rotates his hips in a tight circle and devours the sound Goro makes. 

Goro bucks, can't help the motion, and Ren grinds down before lifting himself up again. It is awkward getting both of their pants off, clumsy in a way that can't be helped, but they come back together like a thunder clap.

They rut against each other like they're teenagers again, fumbling through, trying to chase the feeling. Ren keeps Goro distracted, kisses him until he's cross-eyed and tugs both of their dicks in a shared grip. Goro twists at Ren's nipples and cups his head, always trying to pull him closer.

It isn't until Ren keens, a high, bright sound that resonates through Goro like a shock wave, that he realizes where Ren's other hand is. Without the distraction, Goro can hear the soft, slick sounds of Ren sliding into himself. He can see how Ren's breathing has changed, how it hitches, how the moonlight dips into the lines of his arms as he rides his fingers.

Ren flashes him a wicked grin and Goro watches it melt away as Ren moans long and deep. The sound is visceral. It drips down Ren’s chin viscous as tar and heady as his fingers pick up speed. Goro watches him change the angle and doesn’t miss the way his hips twitch. Ren still has both of them in his hand and it’s almost overwhelming. It’s hot between them, sweltering, like he should be sweating but they aren’t there yet; it’s just Goro unable to catch his breath, gasping through the heat that rises from within him, trying desperately to keep up with the way Ren moves his mouth and his fingers and his hips. 

Words pile up behind Goro’s teeth but Ren is quick to peck them away. “Let me do this for you,” he says against Goro’s lips, “please.”

Goro tries to answer but keeps coming up short. He takes one hand from Ren’s hips and reaches back to meet Ren’s fingers where he fucks into himself. He could marvel at how easily his own finger slips inside but finds himself caring more about the responding moan Ren gives. It’s breathy, just barely heavier than a gasp, and when Goro crooks his finger Ren comes undone above him.

Goro is transfixed, watching the way Ren’s back bows and his mouth opens around the sweet sounds that bubble from his throat. He wants to kiss the furrow that sits on his brow and he wants to bite at the tendons standing in stark relief where they reach towards his clavicle. Ren readjusts and uses his other arm to steady himself on Goro’s shoulder. Goro moves to take both of their cocks in his own hand to replace the sweet friction Ren had given but Ren bats him away. That same wicked grin splits Ren’s face and it makes Goro shudder. 

Ren removes his fingers from himself and pulls Goro out along with them. Goro puts his hands on Ren’s hips like they belong there, feeling the hard jut of his hip bones and the soft lines of his Adonis belt. Ren uses his lubed hand to stroke Goro’s dick and kisses him, teases out the moan Goro tries to hide behind his lips like he’s begging a sinner for confession. 

There’s something like relief that wells in Goro’s rib cage when he presses in to Ren, when Ren slides home. It’s the feeling is more tangible than easy satisfaction. It presses out from him, fills in the marrow of his bones and into the lines in his palms. Coaxed embers igniting as Ren surrounds him and holds him and kisses him until there is nothing but the building pressure just below his navel and sweet affection that presses at his lungs.

A frenetic feeling buzzes under his skin that Goro desperately tries to quell. Ren’s pace is slow, his gyrations wide and the hand on his dick just enough to relieve but not enough to satisfy. Goro’s grasp on the careful control is tenuous and slipping; Ren seated above him-- on him-- fucks him slow through the quiet haze of the night. 

Goro feels disparate, disconnected from the quiet room and the moonlight through the window and the unhurried ease of Ren above him. Ren pulls Goro’s hair trying to run his hands through it, snagging on the knots twisted by fitful sleep and Goro bites Ren’s trapezius in return. Ren’s hips stutter from their relaxed roll so Goro does it again. He bites at Ren’s collar bones and thrusts up with more force and Ren twists his hands in Goro’s hair and pulls with intent. It burns beautifully down his neck and Goro craves the hurt, covets it, lets it replace the pain he had let overtake him.

He watches Ren fall apart above him, feels him leave scores down his back and cries out against the pain as it bleeds into the pleasure thrumming through him. Goro feeds into a hurried crescendo. Presses harder, bites harder, thrusts harder and Ren follows without hesitation. Ren is loud, sloppy, doesn’t leave room for doubt or silence as he grinds down onto Goro and meets him thrust for thrust. 

Goro feels overfull, overheated, overwrought. He thinks that Ren might feel the same as he watches him gasp and follows a line of sweat across the swell of one pectoral. He can’t find the words he wants to say, can’t find his voice save for where it follows every sticky gasp in moans not contained enough to be considered quiet. Goro brushes away Ren’s bangs and jerks him in counter rhythm until he babbles nonsense and noise. 

Ren comes with a gasp, like it was a surprise, as he rides it out in quick, jerky movements. He holds Goro on the other side of too tight, clenching down on him and moving through his own pleasure until the pressure building in Goro bursts and everything becomes white noise.

He kisses Ren. All he can do is kiss Ren as everything else becomes secondary. He feels like the aftermath of a storm. He is stripped down and laid bare and exposed, nothing more than the bones of a corpse since picked clean. Ren is solid on top of him, real and warm, and more than the chill nightmares carry as he collects himself on the pillow of Goro’s chest. Clouds skirt past the moon and the room dips into deeper darkness before moonlight fills the corners again.

“I’ll be right back,” Ren says and slips from their bed with a quick kiss and a wobble to his step. Goro watches him disappear and pinches the bridge of his nose to collect himself. His fingertips still tingle. He feels like a marionette with its strings cut.

It’s an easy decision to wait for the next day to shower as throwing his legs over the side of the bed to reach for their discarded pajamas is herculean on its own. He uses a corner of a shirt to wipe himself off and makes a face as he throws the pajama shirt into the hamper across the room. Exhaustion presses at his eyelids, tired but blissfully empty. He sits at the edge of the bed only for the opportunity to watch Ren return, walking towards him and filling the room with a light the moon can’t provide. 

He reaches out to Ren like the horizon reaches toward the sky and Ren meets him gladly. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading y'all, this is my "goro's palace" cheat fic lmao. let me know what you think, and [come hang out with me on twitter!](http://twitter.com/snarky_broad)


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